William & Mary Tribe football, 1950–59

The William & Mary Indians football[a] teams represented the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, United States. Now known as the William & Mary Tribe, the program was established in 1893. Their long-time football rival is the University of Richmond. Their annual meeting is dubbed the I-64 Bowl (renamed the Capital Cup starting in the 2009 season), so named for the highway connecting the two nearby schools.

The single greatest win of the era came on November 9, 1957, when William & Mary traveled to Raleigh, North Carolina to play #10 ranked NC State in Riddick Stadium. The Indians (2–5–0) stunned the Wolfpack (5–0–2) with a 7–6 win. The loss dropped NC State nine spots in the following AP Poll to #19. It marked the first time that William & Mary had ever defeated a national top 10 opponent (the previous closest occasion occurred on November 6, 1948, when the Indians tied #3 North Carolina 7–7 in Chapel Hill).

The 1953 William & Mary Indians football team is considered, within the school's community, to be one of the most remarkable stories in its athletics history.[1] Due to an academic cheating scandal (coincidentally unrelated to the 1951 scandal), eight of the team's starting members were dismissed from school and another portion of the remaining 33 players transferred out.[1] Among the 24 remaining players, five were returning Korean War veterans and one other had never played a minute of football in his life.[1] Many of them were undersized (the quarterback stood 5'8" and weighed 160 pounds) and even the coaching staff was few in numbers (five total, one of them being the head basketball coach).

Their schedule was so tough that opposing teams would call ahead to make sure that William & Mary still intended on playing them the following week.[1] Remarkably, the Indians started the season 5–2–1 and the only reason they finished with a 5–4–1 overall record was due to accumulating injuries with few available substitutions.[1] Six of the players would eventually go on to play professional football.[1] Their story of grit and determination in the face of overwhelming odds was later written about in a book titled The Iron Indians.[1]

The September 26th contest against the #13 Naval Academy marked the inaugural game in the brand new Navy–Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, which replaced Thompson Stadium as the location for all of Navy's future home games. William & Mary would go on to lose the game, 2–29.

a Between 1896 and 1909 their nickname was "Orange and White", deriving that name from the school's former colors (William & Mary now uses green and gold).[2] Since white uniforms dirtied too quickly, they became known as the "Orange and Black" from 1910 through 1916.[2] Between 1917 and 1977 they were known as the Indians, and throughout this period a man dressing up as a Native American would ride around on a pony along the sidelines during games.[2] This practice was discontinued when the outcry of stereotyping Native Americans as well as the use of a live animal became controversial.[2] Since the 1978 season William & Mary has adopted the nickname "Tribe."[2]